Why do so many political conflicts now revolve less around what people are than around what they refuse to be? Why does "not Bavarian," "not woke," "not a boomer" mobilise faster than any positive identity?


A new two-year project at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Bamberg, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, takes this puzzle as its starting point. Led by Sabrina Mayer (Bamberg) and Christoph Nguyen (FU Berlin), it develops the concept of negational group identities (NGIs): identities anchored in the rejection of an outgroup rather than in attachment to an ingroup.


NGIs work differently from classical affirmative identities. Affirmative identities build cohesion through shared traits. NGIs achieve unity through shared rejection. That makes them fast to mobilise, but structurally corrosive for pluralist democracy.


The project combines digital laboratory experiments with two national surveys in Germany. It asks who is drawn to rejection-based identities, how emotions activate them, and how different NGI types (partisan, issue-based, spatial, generational) shape trust between citizens and in democratic institutions. All data will be openly released via GESIS and the Harvard Dataverse.


A two-year postdoctoral position and a student assistant post will be advertised shortly.